Under the Weather: All hail the Sturgeon Moon

Aug. 20, 2013

Crosses erected in a memorial to the seven students who died at Plaza Towers Elementary School during a tornado on May 20 in Moore, Okla., are pictured. Through Aug. 18 only 716 twisters have been reported in the U.S., well below the 2005-12 average of 1,221 for the date. / Associated Press

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Tuesday morning’s ground fog was patchier than Monday, but is becoming increasingly routine. Ground fog is common in late summer and early fall around here.

True summer-like conditions are the rule this week. High pressure will keep us sunny for Tuesday with nothing more than a few cumulus clouds during the afternoon and a high temperature around 83 degrees, a little above normal.

An upper-level low pressure system followed by a weak cold front will be the players for Wednesday and Thursday. Chances of precipitation top out at only 40 percent by Thursday night, and any location will be lucky to receive a quarter inch of rain. For the most part, skies won’t do much worse than partly sunny.

If we miss this chance at precipitation, it will be another long wait, until at least Monday, before rain becomes possible for us again.

Temperatures, meanwhile, will continue this summertime regimen for the forseeable future, rising into the low to mid-80s each day. We will cool down only slightly, with lower humidity, after the cold front passes through Thursday night.

If you suffer the ravages of ragweed pollen, you have my sympathies. A rainy first half of the summer caused the plants to thrive, and now that we’re experiencing an extended dry spell the rain isn’t washing the pollen away. Projections are that the ragweed pollen will peak here around Labor Day, which is still two weeks away.

Finally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its latest report on global warming, notes that it’s now 95 percent likely that human activities (the burning of fossil fuels) are responsible for today’s climate change, up from 50 percent in 1995.

Of more interest to me are the report’s comments on the slowing of the warming. While global temperatures are still rising, that rise has slowed noticeably since 1998, even though greenhouse gas emissions continue to reach record highs.

The IPCC says a number of factors could account for this unexpected blip – volcanic ash, the solar minimum (and historically low solar maximum), heat being stored by the oceans or the chance that climate isn’t as susceptible to carbon dioxide as we thought.

The fourth possibility doesn’t ring true, and if there have been any major volcanic eruptions lately I’ve missed them. But solar activity and ocean storage could definitely be factors.

Below are the weather statistics for Monday, Aug. 19, at my location 4 miles north-northwest of Fredericktown, Ohio: